Chapter 45

There was no explicit change in the environment. One second they were outside the territory and the next they were in it.

“There they are?” Praveen said.

Adrian looked up and could see them. The swoopers were up so high even with his advanced perception they were only dots. Thousands of them.

“What are they doing?”

“Enjoying the sun, flying.” Praveen shrugged.

“I mean are they hunting?”

“Not those.” He nodded in the direction they were travelling. There were flying shapes just above the trees swooping up and down.

“Are they the ones we need to watch?”

“Not much point watching. They’re all going to attack, eventually. Them.” He nodded toward the hunters. “Those.” This time at the sky. “And the main colony.” He pointed toward a distant mountain. “For most people, we are already too far into their territory to retreat. If we tried to retreat, they would pursue us, but their instinct is to let us get a couple of hundred metres deeper to make sure any chance of escape has been removed.”

Four minutes later the first attack came. Straight out of the sun. Only Praveen saw them. “Ready,” the tank bellowed. The surprise raid would have been troublesome if the birds hadn’t attacked thirty metres to the right. “Unleash,” he yelled.

A moment after, the boom from their sonic attacks reached them, but their ear muffs countered the noise. Adrian shivered as the wave of energy passed over. It was the sort of pressure you could feel in your bones.

Six balls of energy cracked out at the swoopers as they tried to rise to safety. The birds resembled a water bird without a beak. Long legs that were designed to prowl through the shallows as they hunted for insects. The same mostly white feathered body, but instead of the beak it had a type of fish’s mouth. The balls of energy exploded amongst the flock of twenty. The impact was large. The light detonated, killing anything adjacent and hurting swoopers metres from the epicentre. Out of the twenty, six of them flapped away and only two of those were uninjured.

“Charlotte, your throw was off,” Praveen snapped.

“Yeah, I needed to go longer.”

“It’s okay. We’ll improve our coordination.” Praveen then looked at him. “Adrian and Jules, get the corpses. We want core, legs and lips, and maybe a couple of hundred full ones for cooking.”

Without complaint he did as requested, grabbing the bodies and then processing them as they continued forward. Everyone helped with the second task.

“Ready,” Praveen roared.

Ahead of him, Omala, who had been slow in cutting up one of the swoopers, jumped and dropped the carcass onto the ground in her rush to pull out her slinger.

There was a boom of sound and a crackle of energy, and four flapped away. He collected the bodies, and they continued on. The attacks became almost continuous. Adrian focused on butchering the birds, as the fighters were using their weapons constantly.

“Adrian?”

“Yes, Kiyoko.”

“Why are you processing the swoopers?”

“Money is going to be wasted if I don’t. And it’s not like I can help with the fight.” It wasn’t much of a contest and was best described as a slaughter. They would attack and then the light energy bombs being launched at them would eliminate them. Then a new batch would try as futilely as the previous group. “If I’m stuck here, I might as well be useful.”

“But why aren’t you out gathering? Surely it would be more lucrative?”

“My Ambusher’s Steps won’t work.”

“What gave you that idea?”

Adrian stopped himself before he said something he would regret. Kiyoko looked at him, challenging him, a small smile playing on her lips. “I just assumed,” Adrian said carefully.

“Maybe you should ask questions instead of assuming.”

He tried to recall her words about the swooper territory but he was pretty sure the Ambusher’s Steps skills not working were only implied.

“I might go off and do some gathering.”

“Good idea.”

He went to walk off, but she grabbed him and gently turned him to face the other way.

“Why?”

There was a boom as swoopers attacked the spot he had been about to walk into.

Fair enough.

There was another boom behind him, and when he looked, the air knives had struck the same area. The swoopers did that occasionally, attacking the exact spot as their previous suicide party. Another boom went off from the same direction.

Wow. Three in a row. He was glad that he had not tried to break out that way.

In a very short period, he was separated from his group. His mirage charm abandoned, and Ambusher’s Steps protected his movements. None of the swoopers noticed him, even a pair that had flashed through the trees right above his head failed to see him. Apparently, his stealth skills worked perfectly against them.

Kiyoko had told him otherwise. No, she had only implied that his steps would not work, so he needed to join them before they entered their territory. As a result, she had happened to call him back right when his path would cross two master-level ingredients.

Thank you, Kiyoko

He was being manipulated, but if it was profitable did he care?

Off the Jaracol drug and onto the Kiyoko one.

He chuckled to himself, ultimately if the manipulation was beneficial to him he was all for it. He wished she had told him a couple of hours ago because it would have been nice to skip all those hours of processing the swoopers. Unless she intended to point him at more loot?

He kept moving, hopeful of stumbling across what she had sent him to find. There was plenty of low-expert stuff around and even a few mid-expert ones, but nothing stronger.

Time ticked down.

After the previous intervention, he had been sure that Kiyoko had been setting him up to get something special, but apparently, even a level forty-three oracle could not work miracles, especially in areas humans had not explored.

Disappointment filled him. Eventually, he turned back and caught up with them just as the sun was setting.

“No luck, hey,” Kiyoko said when he approached her. “You can’t win them all.” He nodded agreement at that. “However, plenty more days to go.”

“What do you think?” Mike asked.

“I think we should try to get to Benalla before it is full dark.”

“Agreed,” Kiyoko said immediately.

“I’m not arguing with an oracle,” Adrian said loudly. “Everyone, you heard the lady. Speed up.”

“There were groans all around.”

Jules shot him a dirty look.

Step.

“What was that for?” he asked after materialising right next to her. She did not even flinch, clearly used to him by now.

“You disappeared and left me to collect and process the swoopers all god damn day. I am going to have nightmares about those bloody lips.”

Adrian laughed at that. “Yeah me too, they were horrifying. Especially when they leaked that red liquid.”

“I know? What was with that? The bird’s blood was pink but when it came from the lips, it was red like a human.”

“Did you collect it?”

Jules frowned. “I’m not collecting blood.”

“It wasn’t blood. It was concentrated iron syrup infused with sound energy.”

“That sounds…”

“Geeky,” he told her quickly. “But profitable. I grabbed it when I was processing.”

Jules frowned. “Sorry, it wasn’t on the list of parts for me to harvest. Praveen must have stuffed up.”

Adrian shrugged.

“The good news is.” Jules grinned. “Is that I reckon we have fifty thousand of them in our bags. Which means, while I’m drinking, you can spend the next few nights extracting all the blood you desire.”

“I’ll have to check the maths first.”

“You’ll look at the maths?” Her tone was disparaging.

“Yep. Whether it’s worth my while. I think the value added from processing the swoopers is worse than me going out and gathering material.”

“Well, I’m not doing it.”

Adrian looked speculatively toward the other. “Jules, I wasn’t going to ask you to. I was thinking we should do what we did in Albury. Get the locals to process them. I’m sure Omala can organise it.”

Benalla came into view and Adrian frowned. It was near night, and he was expecting it to be lit up with fires, like the other towns, but only darkness greeted them. Concern raced through him.

“Kiyoko,” he asked, his voice tight with worry.

“Don’t panic.” Was that a knowing grin? Was she aware of the Jaracol in joke? Could his interface talk to the oracle? “They blackout everything at night. To avoid giving greater imps a target.”

Greater Imps

Greater imps originate from dead planets and are significantly larger than normal imps. Most varieties mastered flight and they will often travel long distances to hunt at night and have a tendency to target nearby Sapient settlements.

“Greater imps?”

“Dark ones,” she answered. “There’s a large colony that way.” She pointed beyond Benalla and to the side.

Greater Imps (Dark)

Dark greater imps generally possess significant stealth abilities at night, a fear effect that can distract enemy, dark missile, dark pool and stronger ones may also possess shadow hop and instant teleport to a distant of up to three metres.

“Can you tell us any more?” Adrian asked, worried.

“Might be best for you to talk to the town leaders.”

They entered the dark hulks of the town. Light from the sun was gone and thick cloud cover obscured the moon. The surrounding buildings were patches of denser blackness. Kiyoko rode in front of them, her horse’s hooves ringing with every step. If there were humans in the houses that they were passing, then they knew that something was in their town.

With a blink, he activated dark vision and could see everything as clear as days. The houses looked like they were lived or at least had been lived in, he corrected. Most had been fixed up post-event. Broken windows, boarded rubbish cleared away that sort of thing, but now they were empty once more. Some even had signs that their doors had been broken. No humans were in any of them.

It was an eerie atmosphere.

Clomp, clomp.

The horse will draw unwanted attention.

Step, step.

Moving till he was right next to her and then he killed the sound with a tiny flex of his will.

“Don’t,” Kiyoko warned. “We’re guests here. Best they hear us.”

He released his barrier and listened to the horse clomping away.

Ahead of him, a central wall loomed. It was primarily made of stone, or at least magically created rock over a core of junk. There was no light, but a large group of men were on the wall.

Kiyoko kept riding straight towards them. “We seek shelter for the night,” she called out.

“Who are you?”

“I am Kiyoko.”

There was muttering on the wall.

“The oracle?”

“Yes,” she answered simply.

“What are you doing here?”

“I promised to help the World Saver reach Melbourne.”

“World Saver?” An uneasy voice called out.

“It’s just a stupid title—” Adrian yelled back, embarrassed.

“It’s nothing of the sort,” Kiyoko interrupted. “It’s a designation that needs to be earnt, and if you meet anyone with the title, then you should acknowledge that your continued existence is owed to the bearer.”

“And you have one of these World Savers here?”

“The only one,” Kiyoko snapped. “Let’s cut the bullshit. Have any of you fools bothered to identify me yet.”

“Level forty-three,” came a breathless whisper.

“What?” the first guy asked in disbelief.

“The oracle is level forty-three. The barbarian is fifty-one.”

The boss’s bushy eyebrows rose in incredulity.

“As I said,” Kiyoko continued. “We seek shelter.”

There were more frantic discussions. Adrian heard the men mentioning the title of World Saver as often as they said oracle.

The boss stepped forward. “Apologies. The town doesn’t have many resources, and we can’t even guarantee a safe place to sleep.”

“Just take them to the mayor and let him decide,” an old woman on the wall suggested.

“We can’t do that—” the leader snapped back.

“You can. You just don’t want to.”

“I don’t want to interrupt,” Kiyoko said. “But now wasn’t a good time to be having this discussion. The raids are going to begin soon.”

“Yes, yes,” the boss man said hurriedly. “Open the gate. Janice, you can escort them to the palace. Get them inside straight away.”

“What? Me?” Janice argued.

“Just do it,” the boss man ordered. “On my authority.”

The heavy wooden gates, which must have been made post-event rumbled open. Janice was a young girl, or as Adrian guessed probably biologically slightly older than his new body. She hurried them through the town. “Hurry, they’ll be here soon. We don’t want to be outside when they arrive.”

She was almost running.

Kiyoko trotted behind. “Adrian, can you do your silence thing now?” He jogged to catch up and then silenced the horse’s hooves. “They are so noisy.”

After about a hundred metres, an old supermarket building, solid with small windows, appeared with faded Aldi branding. Adrian could immediately sense the number of people in it. Many of them were still dressed in full armour. Janice banged on the door, using an iron door knocker.

There was the sound of cursing and a flurry of whispers.

“Who is it?” an older female voice rang out.

“Janice, Big Paulous sent me. I have guests.”

“What?” There were sounds of bolts being drawn and the door opened.

Six men in full chain-mail and long spears poured out and a seventh heavyset man with a self-important moustache followed.

“Big Paulous said they can stay the night on his authority,” Janice repeated.

“They will only stay if I—” the heavyset man blustered angrily.

One of his men grabbed him. “They’re all above level forty,” he hissed.

“As I said,” Janice said calmly. “Big Paulous said they could stay here.”

“Okay,” the heavyset man agreed, the fight going out of him. “It’s irregular but sure.” Everyone filed in and Adrian just stood there. “Sir, you need to come,” the heavyset man said to him his previous belligerence replaced with politeness. “It’s not safe.” Adrian picked up the sudden rush of sweat from the man’s armpits. He was scared. “We can tell you everything once we’re inside.”

“Adrian,” Kiyoko called out. “There’s time for you to eat and get the full story.”

“Ok.” He walked in. This was going to be interesting.

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